Our first stop on the cruise on a wet drizzly, but typically Alaskan day.

Some history on Saxman Village

Saxman is a small Indian village located three miles South of Ketchikan. The population is approximately 400 people. The village was settled by Tlingit Indians in 1894 by natives from Cape Fox and Tongass Island.

As education was viewed as a necessity for living with western culture, the villagers were looking for a centralized location for a new Bureau of Indian Affairs school. The school had to be located where it would serve a number of communities in the area.

Saxman was named in memory of a Presbyterian teacher named Samuel Saxman, who along with a village elder was lost at sea on a canoe trip trying to locate a new community site.

At the time that Saxman was settled, Ketchikan was only a small cannery town. At once the villagers built a sawmill to harvest the local timber, then a school, church and houses were built. At the turn of the century Saxman had a total of 24 homes and 124 people. It has remained a small, independent, predominantly Native community with its own municipal government, despite the expanding growth of nearby Ketchikan. Saxman, even though independent, relies on Ketchikan for employment, shopping, and some public services.